Answer:
The Khazars were a Turkic tribe that migrated to the steppes of what
is today southern Russia and eastern Ukraine by the 5th century. They
established a powerful kingdom that existed from the mid-7th century
until the early-11th century. The Khazars had a two-king system,
consisting of a military king (bek) and a sacral king (khaqan). The
Khazar army, which took orders from the bek and the military commander
(tarkhan), included tens of thousands of professional soldiers.
The Khazars were a potent military force in eastern Europe till about
the middle of the 11th century, their last power base being the
Crimean peninsula. In the 7th and 8th centuries, they defeated the
Eastern Caliphate in several key battles, thus halting the spread of
Islam north of the Caucasus mountain range, much the same as what the
Carolingian rulers did to the Western Caliphate at the Pyrenees.
(Ironically, these Jewish converts made Eastern Europe safe for
Christianity.) The Khazars gained control over major waterways such as
the Caspian Sea, the Volga River, and the Dnieper River. The Khazar
kings collected tribute from many of the East Slavic tribes as well as
from traders traversing their country. Large garrisons were stationed
at hill-forts located at strategic points throughout the kingdom
(e.g., Kiev by the Dnieper, Sarkel by the Don, Samandar by the
Caspian) to guard against enemy invaders such as the Rus.
The king of the Khazars learned the Torah with the assistance of the
Jewish preacher Isaac Sangari, whose existence has recently been
verified (by the discovery of poems authored by Sangari in the
Firkovitch collection of manuscripts). In the 9th century, the
Khazarian kings and nobles officially converted to Judaism. Surrounded
by the Islamic Eastern Caliphate of Persia and the Christian Byzantine
Empire, the Khazars may have chosen Judaism as their state religion to
avoid being religiously (and hence politically) dominated by either
empire, so that they could avoid being labelled as heathens while at
the same time remaining independent of their powerful neighbors. By
the start of the 10th century, Judaism gained a stronghold among the
common Khazar people, and the Hebrew script came into use in Khazaria.
However, most of the soldiers in the Khazar army were Muslims, and the
non-Khazar ethnic groups within the Khazar Empire (such as the Slavs,
Bulgars, and Goths) did not adopt Judaism but rather remained pagans,
Muslims, and Christians.
Arab travelogues provide useful contemporary details about the life of
the Khazars. Armenian, Slavic, and Hebrew sources also form the core
of our knowledge about the Khazar people. Important Hebrew primary
sources are:
1. The Khazar Correspondence between Khaqan Joseph and Hasdai ibn
Shaprut of Spain, now known to be authentic.
2. The Schechter Letter, found in the Cairo Genizah, an account of
the conversion of Khazars to Judaism, the migration of Jews to
Khazaria, and the military victories of the Khazars.
3. The Kievan Letter, found in the Cairo Genizah, written by the
Khazar Jews of Kiev in the early 10th century.
Within the past few decades, archaeological excavations in Russia and
Ukraine have unearthed Khazar jewelry, pottery, gravesites, and
tombstones containing engraved menorahs and Turkic tribe symbols. One
of the most famous sites was Sarkel, which in 1952 was flooded for a
dam by the Soviet government and is not available for further
research. Other major Khazarian archaeological sites include Verkhneye
Chiryurt (Balanjar, in Daghestan), Verkhneye Saltovo and Mayaki
hill-fort (near the Don and Donets rivers), and Kerch and Sudak (on
the Crimea). For several years, archaeologists have been trying to
locate the precise site of the Khazar capital of Itil; some believe
the wall which surrounded Itil has been found underwater, while others
associate Itil with a hill in the Volga delta region called Samosdelka
(south of Astrakhan).
Secondary sources include:
* The Kuzari by Yehuda HaLevi, a 12th century religious work using
the story of the Khazars as justification for Judaism in the face
of intense missionary pressure especially in Spain. The Kuzari was
originally written in Arabic, but many excellent Hebrew and
English translations have been published.
* "The History of the Jewish Khazars" by Douglas M. Dunlop (New
York: Schocken Books, 1967).
* "The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage" by
Arthur Koestler (New York: Random House, 1976).
* "Khazar Studies: An Historico-Philological Inquiry into the
Origins of the Khazars" by Peter Golden (Budapest: Akademiai
Kiado, 1980).
* "Khazarian Hebrew Documents of the Tenth Century" by Omeljan
Pritsak (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1982).
* "The Jews of Khazaria" by Kevin A. Brook (Northvale, NJ: Jason
Aronson, 1999).
Are Ashkenazi Jews descended from the Khazars? Some believe that they
are, at least to a certain extent. An important Khazar community
remained in Kiev, and family oral traditions indicate the persistence
of Khazar Jewish communities in Hungary, Transylvania, Lithuania, and
central Ukraine. Some Jews have features that might be considered
almost Mongolian or Oriental. However, there is no remnant of Khazar
custom among Ashkenazi Jews, and there are only a few Ashkenazi
surnames (e.g., Balaban) that derive from Turkic. It is sometimes
suggested that the surname Kogan derives from Khaqan, but the more
likely derivation is from Kohen (meaning "Israelite priest"); the
Ukrainians and Belarusians use the letter h, but in Russian h becomes
g, as may be seen in such examples as Grodno-Hrodna and Girsch-Hirsch.
It seems that after the fall of their kingdom, the Khazars adopted the
Cyrillic script in place of Hebrew and began to speak East Slavic
(sometimes called "Canaanic" because Benjamin of Tudela called Kievan
Rus the "Land of Canaan"). These Slavic-speaking Jews are documented
to have lived in Kievan Rus during the 11th-13th centuries. However,
Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from the west (especially Germany,
Bohemia, and other areas of Central Europe) soon began to flood into
Eastern Europe, and it is believed that these newer immigrants
eventually outnumbered the Khazars. Thus, Eastern European Jews
predominantly have ancestors who came from Central Europe rather than
from the Khazar kingdom. The two groups (eastern and western Jews)
intermarried over the centuries.
The Ashkenazi Jews are also the direct descendants of the Israelites.
Genetic tests seem to indicate some ancestry from the regions known
today as Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Iraq. Mediterranean
Fever, for example, is found among some Ashkenazi Jews as well as
Armenians and Anatolian Turks. It is now asserted that many Ashkenazi
men who belong to the priestly caste (Kohenim) possess a "Kohen"
marker on the Y-chromosome. However, note that this provides no
evidence of Khazar ancestry. Common genetic markers in people from
these regions is expected for the following reasons, which alone could
account for the common markers occurring in some Jews as well as
non-Jews in Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Iran, and Iraq:
1. Archaeological evidence suggests that the some of the earliest
ancestors of the ancient Levantine and Mesopotamian civilzations
originated in the region of Armenia and moved southwards.
2. The Tanach records extensive evidence of intermarriage between
Jews and ancient peoples who originated in eastern Anatolia, viz.
the Hittites and Hurrians (including the Jebusites of Jerusalem).
The Edomites who were of mixed Hebrew and Hurrian ancestry were
also absorbed into the Jewish people.
3. The Armenians and Kurds are the descendants of people who remained
in Eastern Anatolia / Armenia / Kurdistan and intermarried with
the Turks and neighbouring peoples.
Some descendants of the Khazars may still live in the north Caucasus
among the Kumuks and the Balkars. These descendents include Crimean
Jews called Krymchaks and Mountain Jews (a mix of Khazars and Iranian
Caucasian Jews). Many Muslim Khazars settled in Azerbaijan and
Kazakhstan and may have intermarried with Oghuz and Kipchak Turks.
If you are interested in the subject of Khazar Jews, you can visit the
Khazaria Information Center at <[5]http://www.khazaria.com>.

User Contributions:

hi, I just want to thank you for this very informative article. As you can probably tell I have an Ashkenazi name. It is concidered a somewhat odd name for a Jewish last name. This has been something of a puzzle to my Jewish family. I do believe it means non believer. If you have any info on the origins of my name or any info related to it I'd sure like to hear from you. thanks again and take care, gary heiden

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